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http://www.bartlebysnopes.com/querrie.htm

This story came from a flash writing prompt on the online writers’ workshop I belong to, Scrawl. One of the prompts was ‘Fifth Column‘, and one was quisling. Of course that lead to a story about a rebellious teenage rock band, just the way my mind works.

Fifth Column really is an all girl punk band from Canada, contrary to this story, they’re not all that bad.

 

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To read the poem Gingerbread Mean, click here

Today, on snow day #2 for this week, my oldest son and niece are making gingersnaps with their grandmother while the younger ones nap. I figure this is a good day to blog about my poem about the dark side of gingerbread men, called Gingerbread Mean, that was just published in Liquid Imagination this week.

Before I go into the story though, just please click the link and check it out, for the artwork alone. It’s pretty good, perhaps the best thing someone has ever put with one of my poems. There have been times in the past I’ve really cringed at the kind of artwork an edtior will choose to put with a poem or short story of mine, but this, I’m really impressed. So please, click the link and check it out. I’ll wait.

 

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Ok? Seen it? Good. Pretty cool, huh?

Anywho, I love Christmas. I really, really do. I love to give, I’m a giver. And I’ve got a lot of people to give to. But there are times when even the most fanatic of Christmas lovers gets dragged down with all the commercialism, the busyness, the drama that goes into the modern Christmas. Especially one that is in the middle of a divorce.

So, this poem came out of that feeling, of being overwhelmed with Christmas cheer. And, being me, I had to add a dash of creepy anthropomorphism into it, making the gingerbread men feel the burn of the oven.

Think, on this day when most of the country is buried in snowpocalypse. When we’re glued to our tvs, wondering what the Egyptians will do next in an attempt to oust their president. What drags you down now, that at some point in your life you really, truly loved. What changed? Write about it, add a cookie or two for sweetness. Get out of your blizzard coma and write something.

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To read the poem, “Never Leave Your Toys On”, click here

I don’t normally play with form poems, but sometimes, like in the middle of April when you’re trying to knock out a poem a day, you just gotta. And so, mid April in 2009, I wrote this shadorma. A shadorma is a six-line poem with with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5, this particular one has twelve lines, repeating the syllable count. The poem was based on a little purple laptop toy my son has, which has a game in which you have to move the mouse over to catch the raining letters. It was just one of the many toys that, if you forgot to turn them off, would start talking by itself in the middle of the night, or when someone walked by heavy enough to cause a vibration, or, in the case of a puzzle that made animal noises when you put the pieces in, if the sun went down and shadows covered empty spaces. Always unnerving, especially in the pitch black, when one’s head is addled by sleep and just wants to take a pee, or get a warm drink and a Tylenol PM.

Oh yes, I was quite proud of my little shadorma. I submitted it all over the place for two years, and no one wanted it. It wasn’t until I sent it to GwI, and editor Dawn Corrigan pointed out that my syllable count was off.  Now, Dawn hadn’t heard of a shadorma before I sent this to her. She took the time to Google it, count my syllables, and email me back to point out my mistake, giving me the opportunity to either rewrite it with the correct syllable count, or take the shadorma label off.

I chose to rewrite and, I think, improve the whole thing. The result is what you’ll find on the GwI website. Girls with Insurance is a quality online journal, in great part to the skills of the editors, who really care about what they put out. Read it, submit to it. Enjoy it.